“An extraordinary collection of extraordinary lives lived out in extraordinary circumstances, “Let Me Tell You My Story” is a compelling read and one that will linger in the mind and memory long after the book itself is finished and set back upon the shelf. A unique and outstanding contribution to our contemporary national discussion over refugees and immigration, “Let Me Tell You My Story” should be a part of every community and academic library collection in the country.”

Mary Cowper
Reviewer, Midwest Book Review

That review explains, in part, why my blog has been silent for a while. If I haven’t said it before, I’ll repeat that it’s never for lack of things to share that I slip off the blog map. It’s for lack of bandwidth. Otherwise, I have no excuses.

Instead of shuttering closed my blog completely (which I’ve been tempted to do because … bandwidth and I love remaining connecting with my readers), I’m back here updating. Who could use a dose of meaningful, inspiring news?

Their Story is Our Story, (TSOS), the refugee nonprofit I’ve been involved in from its inception in the winter of 2016, has published a handsome and life-changing volume. I’m convinced every person on earth should read it.

You, in fact, should read it. And then you should review it. To expedite that, here’s a link to a free e-review copy:

It is a huge honor for me to now serve as the Executive Director of TSOS’ quickly growing community of visionaries and grit & grip doers. And I am, of course, in awe of our many refugee friends, some of whom you will meet in this book, who continue to share their stories and show us the way to the best in humanity. This volume is a tribute to them.

And I take no personal credit for its existence. Special thanks go to our Editor in Chief, the unstoppable Twila Bird, who worked superhuman hours to oversee the creation and publication of this gorgeous collection in record time; to Kate Farrell of Familius Publishing, who has been a joy and strength to work with; to Christopher Robbins, Familius CEO, who’s publicly stated that this is the most “important book” he has ever published in his 25+ year publishing career; Trisha Leimer, TSOS Chair and Founder who has driven our team with wisdom and through challenging personal transition (last spring, she and her husband Axel accepted a request to oversee for three years and without pay 120+ volunteers for their faith in the Berlin, Germany region); and the entire TSOS family, made up of art, photography, video, tech, writing, travel, social media, refugee liaison, fundraising, networking, translation, research, PR, live events and documenting teams.

Their efforts have, among other significant service, produced Let Me Tell You My Story, a heavy, visually stunning, and substantial work. It is in no way a comprehensive collection of the interviewing and compiling work our growing TSOS team has done over these last two years. Rather, it is a cross section of both our refugee and volunteer stories, pointing subtly to the way host culture natives learn from newcomers like refugees, and how the intersection of these seemingly dissimilar lives blesses and benefits everyone.

Let Me Tell You My Story ranks now among the Top 25 Amazon titles for Humanitarian Law right next to the likes of Malala and Nicolas Kristof. We’ve learned it is already being used as a textbook in a university seminar on global migration, fulfilling our vision (and the suggestion of the above Midwest Book Review) that Let Me Tell You My Story should have a place in every academic, political, local library’s and family’s book shelves.

A final plus: a full 40% of Let Me Tell You My Story’s proceeds (after covering printing, shipping and distribution costs) return to TSOS to help our 100% volunteer organization collect and tell the stories of refugees, of their friends made along the route, and of the hosts who welcome them into their new places of safety.

But our storytelling is not an end in itself. It serves the specific end goal of partnering alongside organizations — local to international — to facilitate the integration of newcomers in host communities.

No refugee is really safe until she or he is integrated in a new home. And integration takes every last one of us. Whether you interact with or even know your newcomer neighbors or not, their story is weaving into your story. Our stories are connected. The deeper you follow those stories, the more unified you realize we all actually are.

“Oh Say, What is Truth?” is a buoyant and richly poetic LDS hymn*, but in my lifetime, it’s been sung only rarely in our meetings. I’m hoping that will change.

Because that. hymn’s. time. has. come!

In a post-truth, alternative-fact, fake news, free-press-as-enemy epoch, truth or objective reality is under siege, and with that, the bulwarks of democracy in our nation and across the world are eroding. As never before, we must search for and speak in truth.

It was in recognition of this newly-sprung truth-crisis that Senator Jeff Flake** quoted some of this LDS hymn’s verses on the senate floor. And that was about the same time I noticed the hymn had already been playing in an infinite white noise loop in my subconscious for a very long time. It hasn’t sounded so buoyant in my head lately, to be honest. I have to admit that at times it’s sounded more like a funeral dirge or at best an ironic taunt, and just this week I’ve felt the loop drooping. With so many truths coming to light yet so many in power evading said truths and so many others trusting those in power more than they trust their ability and responsibility to recognize truth … well, I haven’t been singing.

I say this to reassure you that if the attack on truth has in any way driven you to occasional existential despair and a wilting faith in humankind, I understand. I’ve been fighting back despair because, however justifiable it would feel to slump into a mound of gloom, life has taught me that despair deadens. Hope, on the other hand, animates. Hope is spiritual fuel. It keeps you moving. And heaven knows, these days we all need to keep moving.

Few speak with more authority about despair and hope and their rootedness in truth than does Elie Wiesel, Nobel Peace Prize recipient, Holocaust survivor, and author. His voice cries to us as we stand in a precarious crossroads witnessing a detailed recap of many of the factors that led, only 80 years ago, to the erosion of truth that was inescapably linked to the scourge of a world war. Were Wiesel still living, what watchwords would he offer us in our present turmoil?

Wiesel has written that, “We are moved by despair, but we must never be moved to despair.” If we despair, if we abandon hope, if we believe the lie that “truth is not truth”, we will be immobilized, anesthetized, our most tender and compassionate humanity even deadened.

Maybe you’ve observed that when truth is attacked you might rally at first, but you might also slump, then shrug, and finally you shut your eyes, roll over, and burrow into your slumber. It is a deceptively small step from the undermining of truth to despair, and from despair to indifference. And indifference is as much an enemy of the good as is injustice.

It helps me to remind myself more and more these days of my own words, which became an early MWEG (Mormon Women for Ethical Government) slogan, that “We must not be complicit by being complacent.”

But I suggest that Wiesel said it better: “The opposite of love is not hate, it’s indifference. The opposite of art is not ugliness, it’s indifference. The opposite of faith is not heresy, it’s indifference. And the opposite of life is not death, it’s indifference.”

To guard against the numbing effects of indifference, we do what we set out to do from the beginning of this organization. We keep our eyes riveted on the landscape. We watch with heightened scrutiny for any signs that deceitful rhetoric is echoed, normalized or even celebrated in the media. We respond to all of this with alacrity, gravity, and dignity worthy of peacemaking disciples of Christ. We pressure our local civic leaders and media outlets to never wink at that which is a lie. We show great tolerance and compassion for people but we never grant impunity to deceit.

In short, we act in truth. “Action,” said Wiesel, “is the only remedy to indifference, the most insidious danger of all.” Do we feel fed up or worn out in the defense of truth? Wiesel would applaud, saying that in the end we have at least been true to ourselves. We have maintained our integrity.

A meager triumph? Not according to Wiesel, who in his Nobel acceptance speech said, “One person of integrity, [one person who knows and lives by truth] can make a difference, a difference of life and death.” At a time when there is a vacuum of integrity at the chief level, our private integrity and avowal of truth might indeed be our greatest public service.

Which reminds me of a parable Wiesel once wrote with which I will close. It tells of a young man who wanted to save Sodom, the most decadent (and deceptive) of all cities. What were Sodom’s sins? In the Book of Ezekiel we read:

“Behold, this was the iniquity of thy sister Sodom, pride, fulness of bread, and abundance of idleness was in her and in her daughters, neither did she strengthen the hand of the poor and needy.” (KJV, 16:49)

Or, as it is translated in the New International Version of the Bible:

“Now this was the sin of your sister Sodom: She and her daughters were arrogant, overfed and unconcerned; they did not help the poor and needy. (NIV)

The fiery activist wore out his life warning Sodom’s inhabitants of the falseness (the pride, the gluttony, the moral indifference, the civic detachment) of their ways. He coursed through the streets — wrote to his Members of Congress, I guess, and posted on every social media platform, held vigils, even wore purple — as an ambassador of truth, a truth few were willing to hear. They had, perhaps, been convinced that such messaging was fake, or that all messengers but the King were enemies of the people.

At first, folks listened, but only because this man was entertaining, an oddity.

Soon, however, they stopped listening altogether.

Years passed, and the man, who’d grown old, was still relentlessly trudging through town, calling at the top of his lungs, “You are destroying yourselves and each other!”

A child stopped him one day and asked, “Why do you keep yelling if they don’t listen? Isn’t this a waste of time?”

The man nodded, “I know. It’s not changing them.”

“Then why keep doing it?”

“Because,” the man said, “I know I’ll never be able to change them. But if I keep shouting and calling and warning, it’s because I don’t want them to ever change me.”

We can and must stay alert. We must stand up. And we must speak out in the steady and calm truthfulness that the Savior exemplified when standing before His chief accusers. “What is truth?”, a cynical Pilate asked the Being who Himself was the way, the truth, and the life. Pilate really didn’t want to know the answer to that timeless question, given that he didn’t see the answer in living flesh.

We can be quietly confident that, as we follow the Savior’s way and fill ourselves with His truth and light, we will not only be able to discern truth and point others to it, but we will also stand as living answers to Pilate’s question.

Oh, we’ll say what is truth, alright.
But most importantly, we will be what is true.

Unceasingly, throughout the days between turning off our firstborn’s life support and gathering for his funeral, that Beatles tune swirled and flickered like a featherweight translucent fish along the oceanbed of my mind.

He took out his frustrations in the basement on his drums

Parker shooting hoops

Under prayers (our oxygen) that might have been mistaken for mere weeping, mere silence, I heard, of all things, Paul and Ringo, George and John (the four apostles of Rock) singing.

It made no sense.

At Parker’s funeral, though, where friends from around the globe had gathered, and his little brothers gave the prayers, my brother read the obituary, our daughter spoke, and we parents gave addresses, I told the guests that Parker’s death, soul-searing as it certainly was, was a chance to come together.

Come together right now over him, I said.

Estranged families, feuding neighbors, petty jealousies, fear-driven suspicions, or simple differences and distances could be rectified due to our love for this one beautiful boy.

And I’ve come to conclude that this is how we humans are. And that the words spoken in a memorial for Parker by Henry J. Eyring, son of apostle Henry B. Eyring, were wise, true, even prophetic. As terrible and deeply sad as Parker’s death felt for us, Henry said, and as certain as we were that his death would be a landmark, a reboot that would change us forever, there is but one death and one death alone that holds the power to change us forever. That is the death of God’s Firstborn, Jesus Christ.

It has been a dense decade-plus-one-year on the world stage since we stood graveside and watched Parker’s casket descend into the earth. We’ve witnessed the normalization of vitriolic estrangement, jealousy, polarization, tribalism, feuding, suspicion, and distancing due to perceived differences.

Beneath that ocean of tumult and countercurrents the tune loops, flickers and swirls eternally: “Come together right now over me.” When will we learn and live that lyric?

Piles of rocks like this one mark the pathways I follow on my long daily uphill trudges deep into the forested mountains near my home here in Germany. Today, I felt to stop at this one. I spotted a small angular stone at my feet and placed it without ceremony on the very top of the heap. Then, tugging my red neoprene jacket closed across my chest, I sat down cross-legged in my gray jogging tights right there on the bed of pine needles and gravel.

Under a shroud of birdsong, the following lyrics came to my mind:

“Here I raise my Ebenezer
Hither to thy help I’ve come
And I hope, by thy good pleasure,
Safely to arrive at home…”

That verse from the hymn, “Come Thou Fount of Every Blessing” is one I recall mumbling through when I was younger because, honestly, I wasn’t sure why we were singing about Dickens’ Ebenezer Scrooge in an otherwise lovely anthem to Christ. The word “ebenezer,” I’ve since learned, means “stone of help” (stone=eben; help=ezer), and holds a key to our spiritual steadiness. It might also unlock greater understanding of who we women are and what we are doing with our gifts, resources, time, lives.

“Ebenezer”, or stone of help, appears twenty-four times in the Old Testament. In 1 Samuel 7:12, for instance, after intervening in and winning Israel’s battles for them, God commands his followers to raise stones and stack them, therewith constructing a lasting memorial commemorating the miracle he has wrought in their lives. In Samuel we read:

“Then Samuel took a stone, and set it between Mizpeh and Shen, and called the name of it Eben-ezer, saying, Hitherto hath the Lord helped us.”

And in Joshua 4:21-23, after the Israelites cross the Jordan whose river bed has been miraculously rendered dry by God’s hand, God again commands his people to raise or stack stones as a lasting monument to the wonder they have witnessed.

“And he spake unto the children of Israel, saying, When your children shall ask their fathers in time to come, saying, What mean these stones? Then ye shall let your children know, saying, Israel came over this Jordan on dry land.”

With a simple stack of stones not only would the eyewitnesses of God’s help be reminded of what they knew of God’s power, but generations yet to come would be reminded of what God had done for their fathers and, in turn, could do in their lives.

Of course, God didn’t need these monuments. Man did. God knew man’s nature then as he does now. He knew that once our crisis passes and our adrenalin levels have normalized; once our howling prayers of fear or desperation have faded to a whimper, then a drone, then to vain repetitions; once we’ve stepped on safe dry ground and slid back into daily distractions; once we don’t need him quite as acutely as we maybe once did, we quickly, tragically and cyclically forget him. Without deliberate mortal markers that cause us to remember him, we will forget.

Poor creatures! We all seem destined to die of spiritual Alzheimers.

Against such disease, God commands us to do the unlikely: grab some rocks. Stack stones. The point here, significantly, is not that men, as slaves, build some monument of vanity to God. Nor is the point for man to construct a Tower of Babel to physically ascend to God. The object of the stones is simply to take the time to remember. It’s not complicated or sophisticated work. Anyone can do it. But raising rocks of remembrance will do our eternal spirits the ultimate good. Simply remembering God and connections with him will invite him into our very immediate and intimate midst. We will meet and be one with him exactly where and when we remember him. This is the sublime and simple promise we hear weekly in the sacraments prayers: If we will but remember him, we will have God with us.

What might this all mean for women specifically?

While “ebenezer” is used twenty-four times in the Old Testament, (out of which sixteen times it refers to God as our ultimate and divine “helper”), it is only used twice to refer to Eve. When God presents Adam with an “ezer k’negdo”, God gives man not a “helpmate”, as the word has traditionally been mistranslated. Rather, God is blessing Adam with a mighty help — a help meet or equal to Adam’s needs. Eve is given to man and the sons of Adam as a protector against mankind’s enemy. Woman is a formidable partner who comforts, strengthens, and helps win humanity’s most fierce battles. She saves.

We women are all Eves. Women are charged with the holy mission to identify the enemy of mankind in all its forms and lead out in this tired world’s battle. For my work with Their Story is Our Story (or TSOS Refugees, a grassroots NGO where I am a founding member), I am fighting to give voice to my oppressed, persecuted, and voiceless refuge sisters and brothers the world over. And at Mormon Women for Ethical Government, (a non-partisan, peacemaking political activism NGO for which I am also a founding member), we aim to harness our covenant power, wrapping it up in our natural sisterly unity in order to identify, confront, and defeat darkness within government.

But as with anything that has great potential for power, there will be opposition. The danger, as I have observed it in myself, that threatens our effectiveness is if we rely on ourselves or any other faulty source of guidance and forget God. If we rush into our days, not with soothing scripture but with scathing news headlines blazing in our minds. If we, in all our passion for what is good and light, drive ourselves into the ground, cynical and depleted and empty in the end. If we catch ourselves feeling mostly frantic or furious, overextended or overburdened, exhausted or even excessively excitable. If we “feel dark clouds of trouble hang o’r us” which “threaten our peace to destroy”, then we must stop.

We must find a stone.

We must bow our heads.

We must remember him.

We must remind ourselves that in this battle — like all the others since before the world’s foundation — he has been our Savior:

“We doubt not the Lord nor his goodness/
We have proved him in days that are past.”

So sisters, raise your ebenezer! Stack stone upon stone upon stone. Take slow, systematic inventory of your intimate history with God. Reflect on him and his unspeakable love until your entire body feels refreshed, renewed. Write down that witness you have until tears mix with ink. Read it out loud until your throat constricts with gratitude and awe. Share that belief with someone, without shame or exaggeration. Remember stone by stone by stone what he already has wrought in your life and then witness to someone else that he will do just the same in theirs.

Here is just the start of my stack:

I remember when peace extinguished bone-crushing anguish
I remember inexplicable moments of epiphany
I remember a burning prayer answered in the cool of the night
I remember impossible insights via the spirit
I remember dreams that warned and instructed
I remember dreams that were more visitation
I remember his voice and his hands on my troubled head
I remember a-ha! revelations and slow-melt awakenings
I remember pounding my fists on the tiled kitchen floor. And his patience.
I remember holes and hunger filled
I remember the right person saying the right thing at the right moment
I remember when I knew. I simply knew.
I remember he has always, unfailingly remembered me.

(A version of this piece was published on June 24th, 2018 as one of the weekly Sabbath Devotionals for the members of MWEG, or Mormon Women for Ethical Government.)

“On earth peace, good will toward men,”(1) sang angels hovering over a land heaving with political and racial tension, ruled by a degenerate despot, choked by Roman oppression, crowded in on all sides by competing foreign powers — a land, which in just one generation would collapse under revolt, its temple razed to the ground.

Yet it is precisely into the heart of such a conflict-rife setting that the shimmering, pulsating words “peace” and “good will” spilled down the conduit from God’s presence. Like pure water, they gushed into this murky sphere, sending bright, ever-expanding ripples across the thick Judean night. Peace, proclaimed the angels. Peace on this harsh, hostile earth.

The word “peace” makes us pause, shake our heads. Can reasonable people really believe in, let alone strive for peace? Can we, knowing what we do of human nature and of mankind’s history of soaking this earth’s crust in fratricidal blood — can we hope for peace?

Let us proclaim without reservation that not only can we hope for peace, but we must. At Christmastime especially, when we kneel before the Prince of Peace, we renew our covenant to hope for peace, to claim and proclaim peace, and to proliferate His peace.

One can hope for His peace only because it is independent of outward circumstances. His peace begins internally, in a heart aligning itself to truth and light, and once cultivated in that heart, extends ever outward to touch and embrace all of mankind.

Such was the LDS General Presidency holiday message to the church in 1936, where members were urged to “manifest brotherly love, first toward one another, then toward all mankind; to seek unity, harmony and peace … within the Church, and then, by precept and example, extend these virtues throughout the world.”(2)

Like the original angelic annunciation, that plea for peace came at a time of escalating global tumult. The Great Depression was still ravaging the USA; the Spanish Civil War was surging; Stalin was executing his own; Mussolini was forging an “axis” alliance with Hitler; and the latter was promoting a devilish political agenda, which became official when he proclaimed himself the head of the German armed forces. This timing means that, five short years following that December Christmas message, untold numbers who had heard that call to peace would be called to the front lines of the bloodiest and longest conflict of history. On the beaches of Normandy, in the rice paddies of Okinawa, and in the rural jungles of the Philippines, perhaps those soldiers remembered that, despite the weight of the rifles strapped on their backs and the sodden camouflage uniforms stained in mud and blood, their covenant was then as always to manifest brotherly love and seek for peace.

Modern conflict both global and intimate — whether originating in Pearl Harbor, Korea, Russia, Israel, Palestine, Syria, Libya, or Washington D.C.; whether due to joblessness, chronic or terminal illness, abuse, abandonment, addiction, the death of our beloved, the death of our faith — “mocks the song of peace on earth, good will toward men.”(3) Yet our gentle God rejoins all of this sharpness with a soft call to partake of His peace.

It is this kind of peace that both opened and closed his mortal mission. The peaceful greeting angels sang at his birth He repeated in the hours prior to his death. Before the Roman guards would barter for his last bit of clothing, press thorns into his flesh, and hammer iron spikes through his hands and feet, He taught His followers that “peace on earth” would not mean peace in this world, but peace above and beyond it. “Peace I leave with you,” He said, “my peace I give you. Not as the world gives give I unto you. Do not let your hearts be troubled and do not be afraid.”(4) In the face of all that He knew would surely come of torture, betrayal and blood (His own and His disciples’), “peace” surely seems a wholly preposterous word.

Or a holy, preposterous word. A blessing.

When those angels blessed the quaking shepherds with a portion of holy peace, those same shepherds in turn took that testimony to what might well have been a quaking Joseph and Mary, who themselves perhaps needed reassurance that God’s peace, in their tiny Child, had indeed come to earth. Simple shepherds were among the first witnesses who heard and carried the blessing to others, thus revealing one of the secrets of God’s peace: it is always to be shared.

It must also be dared, wrote anti-Nazi dissident Dietrich Bonhoeffer: “Peace means giving oneself completely to God’s commandment… Battles are won not with weapons, but with God.”(5) Internal battles, Bonhoeffer seems to be saying, are won, and peace claimed when we do “the works of righteousness” receiving the reward of “peace in this world, and eternal life in the world to come.”(6)

From a modern-day prophet comes wise counsel:

“No man is at peace with himself or his God who is untrue to his better self, who transgresses the law of what is right either in dealing with himself by indulging in passion, in appetite, yielding to temptations against his accusing conscience, or in dealing with his fellowmen, being untrue to their trust. Peace does not come to the transgressor of law; peace comes by obedience to law, and it is that message which Jesus would have us proclaim among men.”(7)

This season, will mine be the soul into which His sweet serenity enters? Into whose unsuspecting life will I dare to carry His gentle greeting? With which family members, friends or even strangers will I share His gift of peace that “passeth all understanding”?(8) And when this Christmas has passed, will we each have experienced something new about His peace? Will we have believed, received, and gifted to another that holy, wholly preposterous peace?

Yet with the woes of sin and strife
The world has suffered long;
Beneath the angel-strain have rolled
Two thousand years of wrong;
And man, at war with man, hears not
The love-song which they bring;
O hush the noise, ye men of strife,
And hear the angels sing.(9)

Draped neatly on nearly every Mormon temple altar I have ever seen is a white crocheted covering. I had always assumed that such coverings were a quaint nod to our pioneer heritage, those skilled Irish, Dutch, Welsh and Scandinavian hands that provided delicate handiwork to adorn my faith’s earliest temples. It wasn’t until loss ripped through me with H-Bomb force that my eyes were opened to see a deeper meaning.

It was a Thursday evening, one week to the hour from the tragic drowning accident that took our eldest son’s life, when my husband Randall and I, weak with grief and staggering under the molten lead weight of shock and sorrow, went to the LDS temple so that Randall could do what is a common but crowning rite in our faith; he would serve as proxy for our 18-year-old’s posthumous “endowment”, a bestowal of supreme blessings and promises conditioned upon faithfulness to the gospel. We happened to also be asked in that session to serve as something we call “the witness couple,” meaning that we represented all others in attendance as we approached and knelt at an altar, the central feature of the room in which temple goers are seated and instructed. Freshly amputated as we felt, we scarcely had the energy to get up and approach the altar or even kneel at it, but managed to by bracing ourselves—torsos against and elbows upon—that holy, lace-covered altar.

I recall crying quietly, head hung. Dark spots of dampness pooled on lace geometry, I can see them still, and I can also hear the Spirit telling me, “This suffering is a similitude.” My heart cramped. “And this,” referring to the altar covering I was wetting with the blood of my soul, “is the community of Saints.” I focused on that handiwork throughout that evening, seeing it all as if for the first time. And in each of the subsequent temples I’ve visited in the years since our life was imploded, I have reflected intensely on the altar covering’s meaning.

What do I now see in those soft altars and in dainty altar cloths? I see these ten hard truths and endless thunderous power.

I see that life is an altar, not a stage, as I had believed before I knew that I had zero control over life. That all my efforts to do the right would not and could not protect me from death in all its iterations. That God does not, in the strictest sense, protect us from life, but provides us with exactly enough strength through Christ that sorrow be transformed into joy, suffering into strength, death—the greatest evil— into life, and even life eternal.

I see that our Christian covenant before anything else—before white shirts and ties, food storage, memorizing scripture, hosting elaborate youth theme nights—is one of connectivity, companionship, co-mourning and compassion. It is about stitching ourselves to each other in love. Alma, an ancient prophet featured in the Book of Mormon, offered this distilled truth when he taught that Christ’s disciples live to bear others’ burdens, mourn with them, comfort them, and to stand in for God in all things, times and places. (Book of Mormon, Mosiah 18:8-9)

That any other expression of faith than the self-sacrificial and the other-rescuing risks becoming parochial, nothing more than navel-gazing, and ultimately lacks the substance that will create of our simple single threads Zion, and of our threadbare or shot-through selves, offspring truly like our Divine Parents.

That extending our arms to one another knots — or knits—our hearts together, as we read in Mosiah 18:21. This intertwinedness results in a human fabric where each tatted patch represents a tattered and torn someone who is, through intimate, single stitches, held in our community and in turn in a greater, cosmic cloth.

That knitting our hearts to one another doesn’t require that we be perfectly whole to begin with. In fact, those altar cloths provide an aerial view of all our broken bodies and punctured spirits. It’s in our reaching outward to catch others or to be caught by others as if with a fine crochet hook, that we are caught by God. The parallel miracle appears when, in our human reciprocal catching and knitting, God knits and mends our individual broken and punctured hearts.

That our brokenness, while making us feel acutely poorer and more fragile, frayed or shot through, also provides open spaces where we can be caught by God. Sewn closer to God, we are far richer and exponentially more robust than we had been before.

That such torn-to-pieces-hood, (William James’ translation of the German, “Zerissenheit”), is what we came to earth to know. We can, in our experiences with torn-to-pieces-hood rail and resist, rebel and rage. But we can also recognize that holes, not wholeness, invite holiness. Spaciousness invites the Spirit, and in His wounds we are healed, made whole.

That altars are mourning benches, and mourning benches are places of reverence. When we seek to meet someone in their grief, we are treading on sacred ground. This call to compassion—to suffering alongside another—is not a time for perfection, but a moment of supernal authenticity. Any self-consciousness and perfectionist leanings do nothing to help the grieving. We bond on our broken, not on our polished, edges.

That we ought to bear burdens first. (Mow the grief-stricken’s lawn, wash their car, take their children for three days.) Mourn next. (Jesus wept.) Comfort later. (“Comfort” means con+fortis, or “with strength.” Bring all your strengths.) And witness of God (roll out your sermon) only after you have done all of the above, and for much longer than you had ever imagined necessary.

And I have learned that mourning, like kneeling at that altar, requires silence. The Jews sit seven days of shiva. We can begin with at least that. We need only to show up and sit in shared stillness. Indeed, altars are places of listening more than places of lengthy discourses. And real listening is more than a polite or professional act. It is total, imaginative focus requiring physical effort and divine inspiration. Listening to those who are suffering will teach all of us essential lessons in our shared humanity.

As Nicolas Wolterstorff, Yale Divinity School theology professor and bereaved father writes about altars and mourning benches:

“What do you say to someone who is suffering?

Some people are gifted with words of wisdom. For such, one is profoundly grateful. There were many such for us. But not all are gifted that way. Some blurted out strange, inept things. That’s OK too. Your words don’t have to be wise. The heart that speaks is heard more than the words spoken. And if you can’t think of anything at all to say, just say, “I can’t think of anything to say. But I want you to know that we are with you in your grief.” Or even, just embrace. Not even the best of words can take away the pain. What words can do is testify that there is more than pain in our journey on earth to a new day. Of those things that are more, the greatest is love. Express your love. How appallingly grim must be death of a child in the absence of love.

But please: Don’t say it’s not really so bad. Because it is. Death is awful, demonic. If you think your task as comforter is to tell me that really, all things considered, it’s not so bad, you do not sit with me in my grief but place yourself off in the distance from me. Over there, you are of no help. What I need to hear from you is that you recognize how painful it is. I need to hear from you that you are with me in my desperation. To comfort me, you have to come close. Come sit [or kneel] beside me on my mourning bench.”

—Wolterstorff , Lament for a Son, 34

How have loss and grief stitched you to your God?

What have others done for you during times of acute grief that has knit your heart to theirs?

What has it meant for you to mourn with or comfort others?

What is to be learned from the seemingly endless landscape of mortal suffering?

If you are LDS and attend the temple, what has that temple-attendance done for you in your anguish and isolation?

I have never felt the need or desire to hide my religious feelings. My devotion to my faith has never been questioned by anyone who knows me. On the contrary. I am what they call “all in.”

I have, however, sometimes felt the need to hide my political feelings —but only since November, 20016, and significantly, only within my religious community, my beloved tribe. It ought no be so. It must not be so

So please, read. Share. Let’s talk openly, friends. I’d be thrilled if you left your thoughts.

Karl Marx famously called religion the opiate of the masses. Yet history provides us with numerous examples of individuals and groups who, far from being oppressed or subdued by religion, are empowered by it. Think St. Paul, Joan of Arc, Thomas More, Elizabeth Fry, the abolitionists, or Martin Luther King, Jr. For these deep believers, religion wasn’t a sedative, but a stimulant–a tremendous motivator that stirred up an extraordinary alchemy of spiritual authority and political activity. When brought toe-to-toe with institutional and individual abuses of power, the believers prevailed, leading to significant and lasting change that shaped generations. Undeniably, every one of us is in one way or another a beneficiary of faith-fueled political activism.

Not unlike the deep believers of history, there are people joining forces today to form a human retaining wall against the moral and ethical mudslide threatening the stability of our City on the Hill. A wave of religio-political activism is gathering. People of faith — and of many diverse faiths — are galvanizing a growing resistance to what they deem are multiple offenses perpetrated in the highest office of the land. Citizens from across the political, geographic, and religious landscapes—progressives, conservatives, moderates; urban, coastal, Midwestern, southern, expatriated; Jews, Catholics, Baptists, Protestants, Muslims—are rallying in the defense of democracy and decency, calling for a return to dignity and integrity in our government.

One such activist group is Mormon Women for Ethical Government (MWEG), founded in response to the current administration’s first executive orders calling for The Wall and The Ban. From its conception by six founding associates, all of whom affirm abiding devotion to their Christian faith, MWEG has grown with wildfire speed, drawing thousands into its ranks in only its first few weeks of existence. Members come from diverse backgrounds ranging from Ivy League university professors, lawyers, and political scientists to grandmothers who place daily telephone calls to their elected officials; from seasoned political advocates based in Washington D.C., to women across the world who call themselves “accidental activists.” Despite the widespread perception that Mormons are doggedly conservative and overwhelmingly loyal to the Republican party, MWEG’s membership demonstrates a much wider range of political thinking, from those who opted for Mormon outsider candidate Evan McMullin to others who felt the Bern; from liberals who stumped for Hillary in red pantsuits to true blue Republicans who voted for Trump and have since become bitterly disillusioned.

MWEG members are united not only by their opposition to what is happening in US politics (which sends its repercussions across the globe), but also by adherence to the Six Principles of Nonviolent Resistance as modeled by Gandhi and Dr. King. Their peacefulness should not be misconstrued as apathy, however; they march under a banner that states: “We will not be complicit by being complacent.”

Even more fundamental is their discipleship to Jesus Christ. It is faith’s trumpet that ought to reduce to rubble the walls of our echo chambers, calling us out of confining poverty or privilege and propelling us to act. As one MWEG member recently wrote: “Religion is not the opiate that keeps true disciples slumbering, it is the spark, or catalyst for courage in action. My religion does not pacify my worries, it fuels my drive to go harder, faster, longer, clinging to my faith in Christ to strengthen me, to lead me, to prevail when my own human weakness threatens to destroy.” Another member concurs: “It is my faith in my Savior Jesus Christ and my lifelong devotion to Mormonism that inspire my activism. It is the keen leadership and organizational skills I’ve learned as a Mormon woman that have empowered me and thousands of others like me to get major stuff done.”

And what has MWEG done?

MWEG has organized 38 state, regional, and international chapters, in addition to 32 committees and subcommittees focusing on specific issues such as anti-discrimination, education, environment, healthcare, and immigration. In less than six months, this network of women has created an impressive structure that already has facilitated fleet responses to both local and national crises.

MWEG members have held press conferences and staged vigils drawing attention to unethical deportations of Dreamers and other non-criminal immigrants; published op-eds and open letters calling for reform, for action from elected leaders, and opposing measures or bills they consider unethical; sponsored postcard blitzes and phone campaigns to members of Congress; hosted bridge-building events with Muslims, refugees, and others in their communities; actively opposed racism in all its forms; and partnered with other organizations to send aid to refugees and to fight poverty. On their website and other social media platforms, they post daily calls to action targeting issues such as Russian ties to the current administration, conflicts of interest, and healthcare. They have joined with other nonpartisan groups to form coalitions, encouraged and helped train women to run for local and state offices, and sponsored lectures to better inform the general public. Eschewing profanity, vulgarity, and violent confrontation, this battalion of Mormon women continues to quietly, confidently stand fast against unethical governance.

Should that surprise? Not really. Since Mormonism’s fragile infancy, when its adherents were targeted for deportation and even extermination, when they were cruelly chased out of their homes and eventually into the deserts of the far west, political engagement has often dovetailed with Mormon women’s church affiliation.

Thanks primarily to early Mormon suffragists who befriended Susan B. Anthony and marched with her for gender equality, Utah was the second territory in the Union to give women the vote. Their faith did not leave them void of critical thought, wringing (or sitting on) their hands. Despite what Marx and other anti-religionists would argue, those church ladies’ focus on the hereafter did not detach them from the hardscrabble here-and-now. They not only marched; they wrote treatises, spoke publicly, and met with lawmakers. They owned their innate moral force, and were confident in their ability to use it–not for self-promotion, but for the preservation of their families and society; not for some short-lived triumph, but for the well-being and blessing of all humankind for generations to come.

And so it is with today’s Mormon Women for Ethical Government. They call on all citizens to rise up against corruption, in a movement free from the corruptive agents of violence, fear-mongering and self-service. They understand that no movement, as no person, can hope to combat the suffering that evil men cause by descending to that same evil. They are committed to fight without hypocrisy, but with dignity, self-restraint, and charity.

The moral bedrock upon which our nation was built is being compromised. The foundation of democracy and dignity feel sandy and unstable beneath our feet. The tide of deteriorating ethics is rising too close to the City on the Hill. This is the time for righteous outrage to find its spine and spirit, and for ethical, principled integrity to be the least–not the most–we demand of ourselves and our leaders.

***

If you are interested in joining or finding out more about our organization, visit http://www.mormonwomenforethicalgovernment.org/ or our Facebook page. You needn’t be a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints to join us. However, you must be a woman.

When this popped up on my Facebook page today, I felt two years collapse in a blink.

August 22, 2015

Research begins in earnest for my next book, an historical novel — first in a series of six– this first one spanning several generations of one family across three countries: Norway, Denmark and the USA. Here’s a little nugget you might not have known. But now you do.

“Viking king Harald Blåtand [Bluetooth] … had an uncanny ability to bring people together in non-violent negotiations. His way with words and communication went so far as uniting Denmark and Norway as a single territory. … The name stuck, and Bluetooth’s modern day symbol depicts Blåtand’s initials inscribed in Runic symbols.”

That morning, as I recall, I had snuggled up to my writing desk here in our new home of Frankfurt where, a year before we had moved from Geneva. We’d never targeted moving here, but followed an unlikely job offer and clear spiritual nudges to do so, and were now watching for that invisible ink of God’s signature on the bottom line of this deal to slowly appear. Why Frankfurt? Why now?

To finally write my novels, of course. So, I spread out my notes, my six-generation timeline, my character sketches, and my stacks of Ibsen and Undset. Cradling my Bluetooth device in my palm, I mused about a certain Viking leader with a blue tooth and a legendary gift for diplomacy. This was no clichéd mouth-frothing marauder smashing open skulls with an axe, but a radical unifier, a Viking Dr. King or a Gandhi Norseman, if you will.

(Strange mental picture, I know, but stick with me here.)

Bluetooth the Negotiator, I decided, who unified warring factions, who brought peace not through sword but through words was going to be a governing spirit in my first novel. And so I announced it on Facebook.

With those words, the world tilted on its side. Germany—and especially my new home of Frankfurt—became a sort of Grand Central Station for the refugee crisis, a clearing house for the hundreds of thousands (and over a year 1.6 million) desperate souls streaming to the west for safety from extremist terror. Busloads, in fact, arrived right in my little town of Bad Homburg, where a high school gym was turned overnight to emergency refugee center and where beleaguered men, women and children from Syria, Afghanistan, Iraq and Iran sat on the bleachers while I taught them (cheer-led them) German.

Only a few months of intensive volunteering later, six friends and I had formed Their Story is Our Story (TSOS), a nonprofit dedicated to collecting and disseminating refugee stories in photograph, painting, film, and in word. We stood not in front of bleachers full of Middle Easterners, but in front of western audiences giving presentations hoping to humanize a situation that had split the West into fierce pro and con camps. In the US media especially, we noted, blared inflammatory, fear-stoking messaging, messaging that did not match the reality we volunteers were experiencing in the camps every day. Loud voices fostered fear about these refugees, people we knew as peaceful and faith-filled, people who were becoming our friends. This is an invasion, the voices cried. Think of our fair daughters. They will take them, then our jobs, then our liberty, then us all. They will impose sharia law. This will mean cultural extinction. This is the Islamification of the West. Christianity will die. We will all die.

Undaunted, we wrote and spoke everywhere. People listened. We became refugee advocates.

Since 2015/2016, more good and beautiful has happened than I can possibly tell here. I have been trying to tell it in person and in writing elsewhere, however, just not here. Which explains my eight-month absence on the blog.

Much has also happened that has driven even wider those cultural and political divisions that pit humankind in an endless war against itself. Countries threw up walls. Greece clamped down. And TSOS witnessed hot turbulence that gained momentum from the blistering updraft rising from a raging US presidential campaign.

In the heart of that vortex stood a peculiar candidate. Describing him, one Muslim refugee friend, a refined and reserved former translator for the US military who had seen footage of a rally speech, said the man looked and sounded “Very American,” as he called it, “but not the good kind.” It goes without saying that this candidate was no Harald Bluetooth. Indeed, he seemed to delight in stirring up division. He swung poisonous rhetoric like a hand-hewn axe. Like a Viking from your corniest junior high school documentary, this man seemed to gloat and gurgle, his face flushing with smugness as some of his most ardent tribesmen barked hatred. Hatred of the Other. Hatred, even, of their own.

That campaign was a crucible. Throughout it, I taught my refugee students the German words for “dangerous”, “corrupt”, “artificial”, “deceitful”, “reality TV”, “adultery”, “racism”, and assured them (while reassuring myself) that, in spite of his overblown persona, this man lacked all qualifications, self- control, intelligence, or basic morals to ascend to office. His fire and brimstone notwithstanding, this man was not the Savior he peddled himself as being. On the contrary. He did not represent America, and good, decent Americans would give him zero chance of sitting in the most powerful office on earth.

On the morning of November 8th, I drove weary and dumbstruck through a slate gray drizzle to the refugee camp. Huddled in a tent, a group of us — volunteers and Afghan and Syrian women alike — sat wrapped in coats and blankets at a picnic table. No one spoke. From an old transistor radio, someone played Afghan music. Its wailing lament swirled above us like the tendriled mandalas we painted on donated canvas. Elbow-to-elbow I sat next to an elegantly mannered young woman. I had sworn to her that this Muslim-hater and woman abuser would never be elected leader of the free world.

She was silent.

I was burning.

We dipped our brushes in red, blue, aqua, ochre acrylics, painting twin petals on the same big flower. Her hands were younger and more slender than mine, and steadier. She’d seen far worse in her life than the likes of this election. Still, I knew this morning she had fresh worries. Would the politics in the US—the prejudices of this man — set a precedent for politics everywhere? Would he set in motion a wave that would wash over Germany and send her to Afghanistan? Would she be deported back home?

Home? I knew the secret she had told only a German judge and a few witnesses. Home was where she had been abducted in broad daylight by a band of Taliban devils who had tied a grain bag over her head before dragging her into an abandoned hovel where all eight of them raped and tortured her around the clock for four days straight. Home was where, were they to ever lay eyes on her again, her village elders who were outraged that her rape had “dishonored” them, would publicly stone her to death.

On January 25th, the man who had boasted of sexually assaulting women assumed the sacred office of President of the United States of America. His first executive order was also an assault, an act of prejudicial dissection. He called for a ban against all Muslims.

And on January 26th, this refugee advocate became a political activist. Together with some of my closest friends, we founded a nonpartisan nonprofit committed, (in good Bluetooth fashion), to the principles of non-violence for the healing of our government, our communities, and our very selves. Mormon Women for Ethical Government (MWEG), is dedicated to challenging the unethical, illegal, indecent and the corrupt in government, while also identifying and rewarding government’s ethical, honest, and noble. Though we launched as a couple of dozen women watch-dogging the fallout of those first two unethical executive orders, we have grown in number, (MWEG now numbers in the thousands), and scope, (we are 38 committees covering everything from Refugees and Immigrants to Health Care, Education, Discrimination, Conflict of Interest, Environment, etc.), and vision, (we are not a temporary resistance to any single administration, but a movement that will be around for generations to school women in civic engagement and for public office.)

We have been working doggedly alongside several other advocacy and activist groups under the hammering downpour of unethical practices issuing from this particular oval office. There has not been a single week of calm. (You’ve noticed?) So, while it’s been eight months of soundproofed crickets here on the blog, it’s been nothing but Sturm und Drang turbo boosters everywhere else.

You might ask when I will return to writing things besides letters to politicians, news releases, OpEds, media pieces, explanations of policy, or blog posts on ethics in politics and refugees in their ongoing plight? I can’t say exactly. But when my inward Harald Bluetooth has sufficiently used her words to sow peace and sew together the factions warring in her world, when I am convinced I have accomplished with my simple words the most I can to make of current realities a history my children and their children and all children can live with, then I will snuggle up to my desk. I will pull out my reams of notes. I will breathe in my many peaceful (and some not-so-peaceful) Viking ancestors. And I will write fiction that rings, I pray, with relevance, depth, dignity, love and above all, truth.

Months of blog silence means I’ve either been very busy with family and refugee work (yes), moving again (move #20!), ill (the US presidential race), or there’s been a natural disaster (the US president-elect.)

Because I respect differences of opinions (however high pitched they might become in our expression of them), I wanted to insert mine into the global conversation.

Which is unusual – even unprecedented – for me. Over all my years of writing and speaking publicly, I’ve avoided dipping into the political. But I don’t want that silence to be wrongly ascribed to fear, self-preservation, neutrality, lack of interest or lack of knowledge. Politics matter to me, especially my political rights and responsibilities. One of those responsibilities is to plumb the strengths and the weaknesses of the US system by learning from other systems. In every culture in which we have lived, I have learned from others’ philosophies. I’ve also had chances to defend US policies and politics when they’ve been misrepresented or misunderstood.

With the election of Mr. Trump, however, I’ve hit something I just cannot explain to anyone, even myself. All these years of learning to “see ourselves as other see us” (Robert Burns), and now I am mortified at what I see others see in us. Granted, I have reason to be hypersensitive to our foreign policies our foreign image, which are reflected to the rest of the world not in our Secretary of State (as some people mistakenly claim), but in our Commander in Chief.

What will his presidency – his cabinet choices, his policies, his conflicts of interest, his Twitter tick, his phone calls – mean nationally and internationally? History is watching. That is one reason of many behind why I wanted to write this piece. My rights and responsibilities of citizenship won’t let me sit quietly or recline into indifference.

So share this Inspirelle Feature Article. Leave a comment here (or on the webmag itself), even if that’s just a word or two. And of course speak up, even if — especially if — you and I don’t agree.